Soshun

let my dog out the back about half way through, looked at the stars. and even tho it's a film focused on relationships, i really felt drawn to the grand cosmic ineffability of all time. good movie

Between the electrified trains, rising office buildings and billowing smokestacks, a small group of salarymen and associates find themselves struggling to figure out if they still know how to live in a world in a hurry to modernise. Eschewing a direct focus on intergenerational tensions, here Ozu uses the dilemmas of one generation as a means to very subtly examine a society whose traditions have been thrown into disarray by collective trauma and an obsession with national productivity gains.

The scene at the bar near the end says it all. Despite the emotionality of the story not justifying its length, it explores a lot thematically. I appreciate that the third act of the story relies on its female protagonist's choice to provide resolution. Also note the polarity: Husband takes in an older generation's remorse over an empty business life yet still moves at employer's request; Wife moves to be with Husband, receptive to elders' warnings on marital matters. A man's world indeed.

Early Spring is Ozu's darkest film yet, without the ray of hope he usually beams in for us to cling on. Sugiyama is miserable. He's already lost a child, a fact he shrugs off nonchalantly. He works an office job that drains his soul. Meanwhile, Ozu paints a picture of later years: old men who followed Sugiyama's path through life muse over there being nothing more to life. Masako speaks to an older woman whose husband also cheated in the past.

At 2.5 hours, this is Ozu's longest film, and a lot of people seem to think it's unnecessarily long. Personally, I disagree; all the threads that might seem to be unnecessary padding (the war buddies, the digressions into discussions about working life, etc) are the series of little commitments that seem to compel one's attention while the important stuff of life slips by unnoticed. The way the film demonstrates this is masterful, and that, much more than the plot per se, is the point for me.

Excellent, but perhaps overlong Ozu film about a married office worker's affair with a typist. The two actresses who take the roles of the betrayed wife and the typist are particularly fine.

Look. The train.

The subject matter of an affair is both more focused and more risque that Ozu's typical intergenerational family dramas. Don't write this one off as a lesser work; even though it's a little too long, it represents an important evolution in his filmmaking.

Quite refreshing to get some rest from Setsuko Hara and all the "let's marry off the daughter" stories.

Começo de Primavera estrava há 65 anos no Japão. Não vou mentir, tendo a gostar muito mais do Ozu se a Setsuko Hara está no elenco, este filme aqui é belo tratado das relações num período de transição dos costumes na história japonesa, mas sinto falta da Setsuko, mesmo tendo a absoluta certeza que nenhum dos papéis femininos do filme daria certo com ela por fugir de sua persona. Box Versátil O Cinema de Ozu Volume 2.

Touro

90.00

When Kurosawa was making bleak and cynical films noir, and others like Suzuki and Oshima were radicalized, Yasujiro Ozu would demonstrate the discontent of a new generation with characteristic grace.

Once again Ozu slowly builds to a complex and emotionally satisfying conclusion, using a simple style that highlights relationships in families, the workplace, among friends, and between objects out in the world. The two leads are a bit more opaque than we find in many Ozu films, but that works amid their quietly contentious relationship. The final few scenes play out remarkably well. What a beautiful film.

The last 20 minutes or so are really good, up there with Ozu's best work. But there's a lot of plodding, pointless scenes before you get there. Ozu's delicate touch and aversion to melodrama works to the degree that it punctuates the emotional moments when they do come, but here he puts too much downtime in between them (the running time is nearly 2 1/2 hours). Although the movie says a lot about contemporary disillusionment in Tokyo, I'm not sure if it's worth the effort.